Electronic device-based applications, particularly wireless device based applications, allow users to request information from various sources to be delivered to the device. However, the returned information is transient in nature in that it can not be stored in a manner that allows the content of the returned information to be used other than for display or modified by a sender or trusted third party. A particular problem is that the returned information cannot later be addressed for content.
Another problem results from the fact that wireless device protocols are typically arranged such that the user must request information and such that information cannot be easily “pushed” to the device using standard Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) network protocols. Thus, it is difficult to externally trigger from a remote location an application that resides on a particular device to perform a function.
By way of example, assume a user makes a reservation from his/her cellular telephone for a flight to Las Vegas. When that flight is confirmed, it would be nice to have the particulars of the flight posted in the user's calendar application. At some point in the future, the user will want to know the gate information and the flight status. Using existing HTTP protocols it is impractical to integrate messages sent from the server into the user's applications. Certainly, the user can receive a text (SMS) message or an email message, but those messages are stand-alone messages and their content is not in a format that can be readily used other than for display purposes.